Introduction

Gauri Gill (b. 1970) earned a BFA (Applied Art) from the College of Art, New Delhi, BFA (Photography) from Parsons School of Design in NYC, and MFA (Art) from Stanford University in California. She has exhibited within India and internationally, including the the Kochi Biennale; Freer and Sackler Galleries of Art at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Wiener Library, London; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Herbert F. Johnson Museum at Cornell University and National Gallery of Art, Warsaw. Her work is in the collections of prominent North American and Indian institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Freer and Sackler Galleries of Art at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC; Deutsche Bank, Frankfurt and Fotomuseum, Winterthur, and in 2011 she was awarded the Grange Prize, Canada’s foremost award for photography.
Gill’s practice is complex because it contains several lines of pursuit. These include a now seventeen year long engagement with marginalised communities in rural Rajasthan -- including Notes from the Desert, Jannat, Balika Mela, Birth Series and Ruined Rainbow. She has explored human displacement and the immigrant experience in series such as The Americans and What Remains. Projects such as the 1984 notebooks highlight her sustained belief in collaboration and ‘active listening’, and in using photography as a memory practice. Her most recent series, Fields of Sight, is an equal collaboration with a renowned folk artist, combining the contemporary language of photography with the ancient one of Warli drawing to co-create new narratives. Working in both black and white and colour, Gill’s work addresses the twinned Indian identity markers of class and community as determinants of mobility and social behaviour. In her work, there is empathy, surprise, and a human concern over issues of survival

Born 1970 in New Delhi

M.F.A. (Art) Stanford University, CaliforniaB.F.A. (Photography), Parsons School of Design, New YorkB.F.A. (Applied Art), Delhi College of Art, New Delhi

Lives and works in New Delhi

Solo Exhibitions

2018

'Acts of Appearance', Nature Morte Gallery, New Delhi

2016

‘Notes from the Desert: Photographs by Gauri Gill’, Sackler Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC

‘The Self and The Other - Portraiture in Contemporary Indian Photography’, Curated by Luisa Ortinez and Devika Daulet Singh, La Virreina Centre de la Imatge of the Institut de Cultura (City Council of Barcelona), Palau de La Virreina. Exhibition travels to Atrium in Vitoria

Curating

2010

‘Transportraits’, Curated an exhibition on women navigating public places in the city for the feminist activist group Jagori, to coincide with the Delhi Declaration on Women's Safety, New Delhi; the exhibit later travelled to schools and colleges across India.

‘1000 Peace Women across the Globe’, Photographed and exhibited images and text about the work of women activists across India for the activist group, Sangath. The work was shown in Delhi, Kashmir and the Northeast and later published as a book by Scalo.